This ONLY is denied God The power to undo the past.
More Quotes from Ambrose Gwinett Bierce:
APOTHECARY, n. The physician's accomplice, undertaker's benefactor and grave worm's provider.When Jove sent blessings to all men that are, And Mercury conveyed them in a jar, That friend of tricksters introduced by stealth Disease for the apothecary's heaAmbrose Gwinett Bierce
Religions are conclusions for which the facts of nature supply no major premises
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
BIGAMY, n. A mistake in taste for which the wisdom of the future will adjudge a punishment called trigamy.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
FOREORDINATION, n. This looks like an easy word to define, but when I consider that pious and learned theologians have spent long lives in explaining it, and written libraries to explain their explanations when I remember the nations have been divided and bloody battles caused by the difference between foreordination and predestination, and that millions of treasure have been expended in the effort to prove and disprove its compatibility with freedom of the will and the efficacy of prayer, praise, and a religious life, --recalling these awful facts in the history of the word, I stand appalled before the mighty problem of its signification, abase my spiritual eyes, fearing to contemplate its portentous magnitude, reverently uncover and humbly refer it to His Eminence Cardinal Gibbons and His Grace Bishop Potter.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
ABRIDGE, v.t. To shorten.When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for people to abridge their king, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. --Oliver Cromwell
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
HADES, n. The lower world the residence of departed spirits the place where the dead live. Among the ancients the idea of Hades was not synonymous with our Hell, many of the most respectable men of antiquity residing there in a very comfortable kind of way. Indeed, the Elysian Fields themselves were a part of Hades, though they have since been removed to Paris. When the Jacobean version of the New Testament was in process of evolution the pious and learned men engaged in the work insisted by a majority vote on translating the Greek word Aides as Hell but a conscientious minority member secretly possessed himself of the record and struck out the objectional word wherever he could find it. At the next meeting, the Bishop of Salisbury, looking over the work, suddenly sprang to his feet and said with considerable excitement Gentlemen, somebody has been razing 'Hell' here Years afterward the good prelate's death was made sweet by the reflection that he had been the means (under Providence) of making an important, serviceable and immortal addition to the phraseology of the English tongue.
Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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Ani DiFranco
We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.
Epictetus
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.
Henry A. Wallace